Opinion: At 50, Montreal's Place Ville Marie continues to shine

Gavin Affleck, Special to The Gazette09.17.2012

At one time, Place Ville Marie was the largest building - in term of square footage - in the British Commonwealth. Its pioneer use of underground retail shops, inspired the World Trade Center and helped put Montreal on the map in the 1960s as a major world city. Place Ville Marie turns 50.Marie-France Coallier
/ The Gazette

The Place Ville-Marie searchlights, owned by the Royal Bank, have been a feature of the Montreal skyline for 25 years.john kenney
/ montreal gazette

Gavin Affleck is an architect and partner in AFFLECK + de la RIVA architectes of Montreal.Handout

Montreal’s iconic One Place Ville Marie, which turns 50 Thursday, is reflected in the windows of 5 Place Ville Marie. It’s an expression of an era of great clarity of purpose.Allen McInnis
/ The Gazette

MONTREAL - Place Ville Marie celebrates its 50th birthday Thursday, and it still looks and feels as it always has — fresh and exciting. Few buildings in the world have achieved and maintained such iconic status. Even as the city of Montreal has changed around it, PVM continues to shine.

Birthdays are both celebrations of the present and opportunities to reflect on the passage of time.

Initially, Place Ville Marie was all about the future: In 1962, this was bold new architecture of international calibre. Montreal was the metropolis of a young country coming of age, and Place Ville Marie took up the challenge with energy and ambition.

Designed by New York-based architects I.M. Pei & Associates, in collaboration with Montreal’s Affleck, Desbarats, Dimakopoulos, Lebensold, Michaud and Size, Place Ville Marie is an expression of an era of great clarity of purpose and cultural effervescence.

Architecture gives physical form to the values and aspirations of a given time and place — the way people choose to live together, the type of spaces they share, the face they wish to project on the public realm. Outstanding architecture, such as we see in Place Ville Marie, translates these aspirations with both clarity and poetry.

In 1962, modern architecture was new, its practitioners were young and their vision went beyond architecture. Society as a whole was being modernized. Jean Lesage had been elected premier of Quebec in 1960 and the Quiet Revolution was underway. Marked by a unique commonality of purpose and faith in the future, the 1960s in Montreal were a period of intense activity in all sectors of society. The singularly powerful architecture of PVM would not have been possible without this shared vision of a new, better, and “modern” world and the close collaboration of the key players — developers, politicians, architects, builders and financiers. What still shines through 50 years later in the design of Place Ville Marie is its clarity, its purposefulness and its faith in a better world. A building that was rushing to the future in 1962 has now become timeless.

Once the herald of a glorious future, Place Ville Marie is now a vital part of our past. In the present context, it is interesting to note that the 1960s rhetoric of the future tended to ignore history. In fact, PVM’s original design exhibits a profound sensitivity to history, as does great architecture of any period. In order to embrace the future, PVM had first to engage the past. The cruciform shape of the central tower operates on multiple levels: It gives form to the Canadian tradition of inclusivity by providing generously day-lit spaces to a maximum of occupants; it symbolizes Montreal’s history as a centre of Catholic culture; it lends old-world elegance and grace to a large-scale floor plate.

Still sheathed today in aluminum produced in Quebec smelters, the cruciform tower is surrounded by lower-scale concrete buildings on Cathcart St. and Mansfield St. While often overlooked in the design of the overall scheme, these background buildings play an important role in linking Place Ville Marie and its central plaza to the city.

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Canada is a creation of 19th-century railway barons, and the integration of the Canadian National Railway on the lower levels of Place Ville Marie gave a 20th-century update to Montreal’s place as both the geographic and logistical terminus of the railway. By closing the gaping railway excavation that had divided downtown Montreal, Place Ville Marie invented an entirely new urban form: the Underground City.

Place Ville Marie is both uniquely local and unapologetically international. As vintage international-style modernism, it uses unadorned, minimalist surfaces to emphasize the grandeur of dramatic interior spaces. It participates actively in both the street life of Montreal and the nightlife of its skyline. Inspiring us to imagine a better world, PVM has become both symbol and myth and by its very presence nurtures our daily lives.

As a destination that has always has been stylish and fashionable, Place Ville Marie is an object lesson in the relationship between fashion and architecture. The reason Place Ville Marie has remained fashionable all these years isn’t really about style at all. We notice fashion at Place Ville Marie since it is the surface offered to our eyes. Beneath this surface lies a design based on collective values that never go out of style — hope, generosity, faith in the future, civility, co-operation, inspiration and imagination.

Happy birthday, Place Ville Marie!

Gavin Affleckis an architect and partner in Affleck + de la Riva architectes of Montreal.

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